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THE    MODERN     LIBRARY 

OF    THE    WORLD'S    BEST    BOOKS 


THE  ART  OF  AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 


fasadena  Museum  of  Modern  Art 
--.   Libraiy 


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THE   ART    OF 
AUBREYaREARDSLEY 

Introduction  by  ARTHUR  SYMONS 


BONI   AND  LIVERIGHT,  INC. 


PUBLISHERS 


NEW   YORK 


Copyright,  1918.  by 

BONI  &   LiVERIGHT,   InC. 


Printed  in  the  United   States   of  America 


Library 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface       15 

Aubrey   Beardsley  by   Arthur  Symons    .     ...    23 
Illustrations 37 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


1.  Portrait  of  Aubrey  Beardsley. 

2.  The  Litany  of  ]\Iary  Magdalen. 

3.  A  Portrait  of  Aubrey  Beardsley. 

By    Himself. 

4.  Incipit  Vita  Nova. 

5.  Sandro   Botticelli. 

6.  "Siegfried." 

From  "The  Studio.'' 

7.  Merlin. 

From  "Le  Morte  d'Arthur." 

8.  Vignette. 

From  "Le  Morte  d'Arthur.' 

9.  La   Beale   Isoud   at   Joyous    Gard. 

From  "Le  Morte  d'Arthur.'' 

10.  Plow     Queen    Guenever    Made  Her  a  Nun. 

From  "Le  Morte  d'Arthur. 

n.  "Of     a     Neophyte     and    How    the    Black    Art 

Was     Revealed     Unto    Him." 

12.  The  Kiss  of  Judas. 

13.  A  Suggested  Reform  in  Ballet  Costume. 

14.  Baron  Verdigris. 

15.  The     Woman      in     the  Moon. 

16.  The  Peacock   Skirt. 

17.  The  Black  Cape. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

18.  The  Platonic  Lament. 

19.  Enter  Herodias. 

20.  The  Eyes  of  Herod. 

21.  The  Stomach  Dance. 

22.  The  Toilette  of  Salome. 

23.  The  Dancer's  Reward. 

24.  The  Climax. 

25.  The    Toilette  of  Salome. 

First  Drawing. 

26.  John  and  Salome. 
11 .  Salome  on  Settle. 

28.  Design  for  Tailpiece. 

29.  Design  for  "Salome." 

From  "The  Studio.' 

30.  Design  for  the  Cover  of   "The     Yellow     Book' 

Prospectus. 

31.  Xight  Piece. 

32.  Portrait  of  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell. 

a.  Title  Page  Ornament  for  "The  Yellow  Book." 

34.  Comedy  Ballet  of  Marionettes,  \. 

From    "The    Yellow    Book."    Vol.    II. 

35.  Comedy  Ballet  of   Marionettes,  II. 

From    "The    Yellow    Hook."    Vol.    II. 

36.  Comedy   Ballet  of  Marionettes,     III. 

10 


ILLUSTRATIONS 
2)1.  Gargons  de  Cafe. 

From    "The    Yellow    Book."  Vol.    II. 

38.  The    Slippers    of    Cinderella. 

39.  Portrait  of  Mantegna. 

From    "The    Yellow    Book."    Vol.   III. 

40.  The  Wagnerites. 

From    "The    Yellow    Book."    \oI.  III. 

41.  La  Dame  Aux  Camelias. 

From    "The    Yellow    Book."    Vol.   III. 

42.  Madame  Re  jane. 

43.  Portrait  of  Balzac. 

44.  Design   for   Frontispiece  to    "An   Evil    Motherhood." 

45.  Design   for  Front  Cover  of    "Pierrot." 

46.  Design    for    End    Paper  of  "Pierrot." 

47.  Design    for    End    Paper  of  "Pierrot." 

48.  Lysistrata. 

49.  An  Athenian  Woman. 

50.  Myrrhina. 

51.  The  Dream. 

52.  The  Baron's  Prayer. 

53.  The  Rape  of  the  Lock. 

54.  Design  for  the  Prospectus  of  "The  Savoy." 

II 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

55.  Another  Design  for  the    Prospectus     of     "The 

Savoy." 

56.  Cover  Design. 

From  "The  Savoy''  No.  1. 

57.  Contents  Page. 

From  "The  Savoy''  No.  1. 

58.  The  Abbe. 

From  "Under  the  Hill." 

59.  The  Fourth  Tableau  of  "Das  Rheingold." 

60.  Erda. 

To  illustrate  "Das  Rheingold." 

61.  Flosshilde. 

To  illustrate  "Das  Rheingold." 

62.  The  Death  of  Pierrot. 

63.  Ave  Atque  Vale :  Catullus,  Carmen,  CI. 

64.  Aubrey    Beardsley's  Book-PIate. 


12 


AUBREY   BEARDSLEY 
AN  ESSAY  WITH  A  PREFACE 

BY 

Arthur  Symons 


PREFACE 

IT  was  in  the  summer  of  1895  that  I  first  met  Aubrey 
*  Beardsley.  A  publisher  had  asked  me  to  form  and 
edit  a  new  kind  of  magazine,  which  was  to  appeal  to  the 
public  equally  in  its  letterpress  and  its  illustrations  :  need 
I  say  that  I  am  defining  the  "Sa2'oy"f  It  was,  I  admit, 
to  have  been  something  of  a  rival  to  the  "Yellow  Book," 
which  had  by  that  time  ceased  to  mark  a  movement,  and 
had  come  to  be  little  more  than  a  publisher's  magazine. 
I  forget  exactly  when  the  expulsion  of  Beardsley  from 
the  "Yellozv  Book''  had  occurred;  it  had  been  sufficiently 
recent,  at  all  events,  to  make  Beardsley  singularly  ready 
to  fall  in  with  my  project  when  I  went  to  him  and  asked 
him  to  devote  himself  to  illusitrating  my  quarterly.  He 
was  supposed,  just  then,  to  be  dying;  and  as  I  entered 
the  room,  and  saw  him  lying  out  on  a  couch,  horribly 
white,  I  wondered  if  I  had  come  too  late.  He  was  full 
of  ideas,  full  of  enthusiasm,  and  I  think  it  was  then  that 
he  suggested  the  name  "Savoy,"  finally  adopted  after 
endless  changes  and  uncertainties. 

A  little  later  we  met  again  at  Dieppe,  where  for  a 
month  I  saw  him  daily.  It  was  at  Dieppe  that  the 
"Savoy"  was  really  planned,  and  it  was  in  the  cafe 
which  Mr.  Sickert  has  so  often  painted  that  I  wrote  the 
slightly  pettish  and  defiant  "Editorial  Note,"  which  made 
so  many  enemies  for  the  first  number.  Dieppe  just  then 
was  a  meeting-place  for  the  younger  generation  ;  some 
of  us  spent  the  whole  summer  there,  lazily  but  profit- 
ably; others  came  and  went.  Beardsley  at  that  time 
imagined  himself  to  be  unable  to  draw  anywhere  but  in 
London.  He  made  one  or  two  faint  attempts,  and  even 
prepared  a  canvas  for  a  picture  which  was  never  painted, 
in  the  hospitable  studio  in  which  M.  Jacques  Blanche 
painted  the  admirable  portrait  reproduced  in  the  frontis- 
piece. But  he  found  many  subjects,  some  of  which  he 
aifterwards  worked  out,  in  the  expressive  opportunities 
15 


PREFACE 

of  the  Casino  and  the  heach.  I  le  never  walked ;  I 
n«ver  saw  him  look  at  the  sea ;  but  at  night  he  was 
almost  always  to  be  seen  watching  the  gamblers  at 
petits  chevaux,  studying  them  with  a  sort  of  hypnotised 
attention  for  that  picture  of  "The  Little  Horses,"  which 
was  never  done.  He  liked  the  large,  deserted  rooms,  at 
hours  when  no  one  was  there;  the  sense  of  frivolous 
things  caught  at  a  moment  of  suspended  life,  en  desha- 
bille. He  would  glance  occasionally,  but  with  more  im- 
patience, at  'the  dances,  especially  the  children's  dances, 
in  the  concert  room ;  but  he  rarely  missed  a  concert,  and 
would  glide  in  every  afternoon,  and  sit  on  the  high 
benches  at  the  side,  always  carrying  his  large,  gilt- 
leather  portfolio  with  the  magnificent,  old,  red-lined 
folio  paper,  which  he  would  often  open,  to  write  ,'iome 
lines  in  pencil.  He  was  at  work  then,  with  an  almost 
pathetic  tenacity,  at  his  story,  never  to  be  finished,  the 
story  which  never  could  have  been  finished,  " Under'  the 
Hill,"  a  new  version,  a  parody  (like  Laforgue's  parodies, 
but  how  unlike  them,  or  anything!)  of  the  story  of 
Venus  and  Tannhauser.  Most  of  it  was  done  at  these 
concerts,  and  in  the  little,  close  writing-room,  where 
visitors  sat  writing  letters.  The  fragment  published  in 
the  first  two  numbers  of  the  "Savoy"  had  passed  through 
many  stages  before  it  found  its  way  there,  and  would 
have  passed  through  more  if  it  had  ever  been  carried 
further.  Tannhauser,  not  quite  willingly,  had  put  on 
Abbe's  disguise,  and  there  were  other  unwilling  dis- 
guises in  those  brilliant,  disconnected,  fantastic  pages, 
in  which  every  sentence  was  meditated  over,  written  for 
Its  own  sake,  and  left  to  find  its  way  in  its  own  para- 
graph. It  could  never  have  been  finished,  for  it  had 
never  really  been  begun ;  but  what  undoubted,  singular, 
literary  ability  there  is  in  it,  all  the  same ! 

I  think  Beardsley  would  rather  have  been  a  great 
writer  than  a  great  artist ;  and  I  remember,  on  one 
occasion,  when  he  had  to  fill  up  a  form  of  admission  to 
some  library  to  which  I  was  introducing  him,  his  insist- 
ence on  describing  himself  as  "man  of  letters."  At  one 
time  he  was  going  to  write  an  essay  on  "Les  Liaisons 
16 


PREFACE 

Dangereuses,"  at  another  he  had  planned  a  book  on 
Rousseau.  But  his  plans  for  writing  changed  even  more 
quickly  than  his  plans  for  doing  drawings,  and  with  less 
profitable  results  in  the  meantime.  He  has  left  no  prose 
except  that  fragment  of  a  sitory;  and  in  verse  only  the 
three  pieces  published  in  the  "Savoy."  Here,  too,  he  was 
terribly  anxious  to  excel ;  and  his  patience  over  a  me- 
dium so  unfamiliar,  and  hence  so  difficult,  to  him  as 
verse,  was  infinite.  We  spent  two  whole  days  on  the 
grassy  ramparts  of  the  old  castle  at  Arques-la-Bataille, 
near  Dieppe ;  I  working  at  something  or  other  in  one 
part,  he  working  at  ''The  Three  Musicians"  in  another. 
The  eight  stanzas  of  that  amusing  piece  of  verse  are 
really,  in  their  own  way,  a  tour  de  force;  by  sheer 
power  of  will,  by  deliberately  saying  to  himself,  "I  will 
write  a  poem,"  and  by  working  with  such  strenuous 
application  that  at  last  a  certain  result,  the  kind  of  result 
he  had  willed,  did  really  come  about,  he  succeeded  in 
doing  what  he  had  certainly  no  natural  aptitude  for 
doing.  How  far  was  that  more  genuine  aspect  of  his 
genius  also  an  "infinite  capacity  for  taking  pains?" 

The  republication  by  Mr.  Lane,  the  publisher  of  the 
"Yelloiv  Book"  of  Beardsley's  contributions  in  prose 
and  verse  to  the  "Savoy"  its  "rival,"  as  Mr.  Lane  cor- 
rectly calls  it,  with  the  illustrations  which  there  accom- 
panied them,  reopens  a  little,  busy  chapter  in  contempo- 
rary history.  It  is  the  history  of  yesterday,  and  it  seems 
already  at  this  distance  of  half  a  century.  Then,  what 
brave  petulant  outbursts  of  poets  and  artists,  what  comic 
rivalries  and  reluctances  of  publishers,  what  droll  con- 
flicts of  art  and  morality,  what  thunders  of  the  trumpets 
of  the  press!  The  press  is  silent  now,  or  admiring;  the 
pulilishcrs  have  changed  places,  and  all  rivalries  are 
handsomely  buried,  with  laudatory  inscriptions  on  their 
tombstones.  The  situation  has  its  irony,  which  would 
have  appealed  most  to  the  actor  most  conspicuously 
absent  from  the  scene. 

Beardsley  was  very  anxious  to  be  a  writer,  and, 
though  in  his  verse  there  was  no  merit  except  that  of 
a  thing  done  to  order,  to  one's  own  order,  and  done 
17 


PREFACE 

without  a  flaw  in  the  process,  there  was,  in  his  prose,  a 
much  finer  quality,  and  his  fragment  of  an  unachieved 
and  unplanned  romance  has  a  savour  of  its  own.  It  is 
the  work,  not  of  a  craftsman,  but  of  an  amateur,  and 
in  this  it  may  be  compared  with  the  prose  of  Whistler, 
so  great  an  artist  in  his  own  art  and  so  brilliant  an 
amateur  in  the  art  of  literature.  Beardsley  too  was 
something  of  a  wit,  and  in  his  prose  one  sees  hard 
intellect,  untinged  with  sentiment,  employed  on  the  work 
of  fancy.  He  wrote  and  he  saw,  unimaginatively,  and 
without  passion,  but  with  a  fierce  sensitive  precision ; 
and  he  saw  by  preference  things  elaborately  perverse, 
full  of  fantastic  detail,  unlikely  and  possible  things, 
brought  toegther  from  the  four  corners  of  the  universe. 
All  those  descriptions  in  "Under  the  Hill"  are  the  equiv- 
alent of  his  drawings,  and  they  are  of  especial  interest 
in  showing  how  definitely  he  saw  things,  and  with  what 
calm  minuteness  he  could  translate  what  seemed  a  fever- 
ish drawing  into  oddly  rational  words.  Lis-ten,  for 
instance,  to  this  garden-picture:  "In  the  middle  was  a 
huge  bronze  fountain  with  three  basins.  From  the  first 
rose  a  many-breasted  dragon  and  four  little  loves 
mounted  upon  swans,  and  each  love  was  furnished  with 
a  bow  and  arrow.  Two  of  them  that  faced  the  monster 
seemed  to  recoil  in  fear,  two  that  were  behind  made 
bold  enough  to  aim  their  shafts  at  him.  From  the  verge 
of  the  second  sprang  a  circle  of  slim  golden  columns 
that  supported  silver  doves  with  tails  and  wings  spread 
out.  The  third,  held  by  a  grouo  of  grotesquelv  attenu- 
ated satyrs,  is  ccnitred  with  a  thin  pipe  hung  with  masks 
and  roses  and  capped  with  children's  heads."  The  pic- 
ture was  never  drawn,  but  does  it  want  more  than  the 
drawing  ? 

The  prose  of  "Under  the  Hill"  does  not  arrive  at 
being  really  good  prose,  but  it  has  felicities  tliat  aston- 
ish, those  felicities  by  which  the  amateur  astonishes  the 
craftsman.  The  imaginary  dedication  is  the  best,  the 
most  sustained,  piece  of  writing  in  it,  but  there  is  wit 
everywhere,  subtly  intermingled  with  fancy,  and  there 
are  touches  of  color  such  as  this :  "Huge  moths,  so 
18 


PREFACE 

richly  winged  that  they  must  have  banqueted  upon  tapes- 
tries and  royal  stuffs,  slept  on  the  pillars  that  flanked 
either  side  of  the  gateway,  and  the  eyes  of  all  the  moths 
remained  open  and  were  burning  and  bursting  with  a 
mesh  of  veins."  Here  and  there  is  a  thought  or  a 
mental  sensation  like  that  of  "the  irritation  of  loveliness 
that  can  never  be  entirely  comprehended,  or  ever  enjoyed 
to  the  utmost."  There  are  many  affectations,  some 
copied  from  Oscar  Wilde,  others  personal  enough,  such 
as  the  use  of  French  words  instead  of  English  ones : 
"chevelure"  for  hair,  and  "pantoufles"  for  slippers.  I 
do  not  think  that  Beardsley  finally  found  a  place  for  the 
word  which  he  had  adapted  from  the  French,  "papil- 
lions,"  instead  of  "papillons"  or  butterflies ;  it  would 
have  come  amusingly,  and  it  was  one  of  his  pet  words. 
But  his  whole  conception  of  writing  was  that  of  a  game 
with  words ;  some  obsolete  game  with  a  quaint  name, 
like  that  other  favorite  word  of  his,  "spellicans,"  for 
which  he  did  find  a  place  an  the  story. 

Taken  literally,  this  fragment  is  hardly  more  than  a 
piece  of  nonsense,  and  was  hardly  meant  to  be  more 
than  that.  Yet,  beyond  the  curiosity  and  ingenuity  of 
the  writing,  how  much  there  is  of  real  skill  in  the  evoca- 
tion of  a  certain  impossible  but  quite  credible  atmos- 
phere !  Its  icy  artificiality  is  indeed  one  of  its  qualities, 
and  produces,  by  mere  negation,  an  emotional  effect. 
Beardsley  did  not  believe  in  his  own  enchantments,  was 
never  haunted  by  his  own  terrors,  and,  in  his  queer 
sympathy  and  familiarity  with  evil,  had  none  of  the 
ardors  of  a  lost  soul.  In  the  place  of  Faust  he  would 
have  kept  the  devil  at  his  due  distance  by  a  polite 
incredulity,  openly  expressed,  as  to  the  very  existence 
of  his  interlocutor. 

It  was  on  the  balcony  of  the  Hotel  Henri  IV,  at 
Arques,  one  of  those  September  evenings,  that  I  had  the 
only  quite  serious,  almost  solemn,  conversation  I  ever 
had  with  Beardsley.  Not  long  before  we  had  gone 
together  to  visit  Alexandre  Dumas  fils  at  Puy,  and  it 
was  from  talking  of  that  thoughtful,  but  entirely, 
Parisian  writer,  and  his  touching,  in  its  unreal  way  so 
19 


l'Rl>:i>ACE 

re.'il,  "Dame  aux  Camelias"'  (tlie  novel,  not  the  play), 
which  I'eardsley  admired  so  much,  that  wc  passed  into 
an  unexpectedly  intimate  mood  of  speculation.  Those 
stars  up  yonder,  whether  they  were  really  the  imprison- 
ing? worlds  of  otiier  creatures  like  ourselves ;  the  strange 
ways  ])y  which  the  soul  might  have  come  and  must  cer- 
tainly go ;  death,  and  the  future :  it  was  such  things  that 
I  found  him  speaking,  for  once  without  mockery.  And 
he  told  me  then  a  singular  dream  or  vision  which  he 
had  had  when  a  child,  waking  up  at  night  in  the  moon- 
light and  seeing  a  great  crucifix,  with  a  bleeding  Christ, 
falling  off  the  wall,  where  certainly  there  was  not,  and 
had  never  been,  any  crucifix.  It  is  only  by  remembering 
that  one  conversation,  that  vision,  the  tone  of  awe  with 
which  he  told  lit,  that  I  can,  with  a  great  effort,  imagine 
to  myself  the  Beardsley  whom  I  knew  with  his  so 
positive  intelligence,  his  imaginative  sight  of  the  very 
spirit  of  man  as  a  thing  of  definite  outline,  transformed 
finally  into  the  Beardsley  who  died  in  the  peace  of  the 
last  sacraments  of  the  Church,  holding  the  rosary  be- 
tween his  fingers. 

And  yet,  if  you  read  carefully  the  book  of  letters  tc 
an  unnamed  friend,  which  has  been  published  six  years 
after  his  death,  it  will  be  seen  that  here  too,  as  always, 
we  are  in  tlie  presence  of  a  real  thing.  In  these  naked 
letters  we  see  a  man  die.  And  the  man  dies  inch  by 
inch,  like  one  who  slips  inch  by  inch  over  a  precipice, 
and  knows  that  the  grasses  at  which  his  fingers  tear, 
clutching  their  feeble  roots,  are  but  delaying  him  for  so 
many  instants,  and  that  he  must  soon  fall.  We  see  a 
fine,  clear-sighted  intellect  set  on  one  problem :  how  to 
get  well ;  then,  how  to  get  a  little  better ;  and  then,  how 
not  to  get  worse.  He  records  the  weather  of  each  day, 
and  each  symptom  of  his  disease;  with  a  desperate  calm- 
ness, which  but  rarely  deserts  or  betrays  him.  To-da> 
he  feels  better  and  can  read  Laclos ;  to-morrow  he  is 
not  so  well,  and  he  must  hear  no  music.  He  has  pious 
books  and  pious  friends  for  the  days  when  he  is  driven 
back  upon  himself,  and  must  turn  aside  his  attention 
from  suffering  which  brings  despair.  Nothing  exists  any 
20 


PREFACE 

longer,  outside  himself;  and  there  may  be  safety  some- 
where, in  a  "preservative  girdle"  or  in  a  friend's  prayer. 
He  asks  for  both.  Roth  are  to  keep  him  alive.  He 
meets  at  Mentone  someone  who  seems  worse  than  him- 
self, and  who  yet  "lives  on  and  does  things.  My  spirits 
have  gone  up  immensely  since  I  have  known  him."  A 
change  of  sky,  the  recurrence  of  a  symptom:  "to-day, 
alas,  there  is  a  downpour  and  I  am  miserably  depressed." 
He  reads  S.  Alphonsus  Liguori,  and  it  is  "mere  physical 
exhaustion  more  than  hardness  of  heart  that  leaves  me 
so  apathetic  and  uninterested."  He  chngs  to  religion 
as  to  his  friend,  thinking  that  it  may  help  him  to  keep 
himself  in  life.  He  trains  himself  to  be  gentle,  to  hope 
little,  to  attack  the  sources  of  health  stealthily.  A 
"wonderful  stretch  of  good  health,"  a  few  whole  days 
of  it,  makes  him  "tremble  at  moments."  "Don't  think 
me  foolish  to  haggle  about  a  few  months,"  he  writes, 
when  he  is  hoping,  all  the  time,  that  "the  end  is  less 
near  than  it  seems."  He  is  received  into  the  Church, 
makes  his  first  confession,  makes  his  first  communion. 
It  seems  to  him  that  each  is  a  new  clutch  upon  the  roots 
of  the  grasses. 

The  whole  book  is  a  study  in  fear,  and  by  its  side 
everything  else  that  has  been  done,  imaginatively  or 
directly,  on  that  fierce  passion,  seems  mere  oratory  or 
a  talking  beside  the  question.  Here  Beardsley  is,  as  he 
is  in  his  drawings,  close,  absorbed,  limited,  and  unflinch- 
ing. That  he  should  be  so  honest  with  his  fear;  that 
he  should  sit  down  before  its  face  and  study  it  feature 
by  feature;  that  he  rhould  never  turn  aside  his  eyes  for 
more  than  an  instant,  make  no  attempt  to  escape,  but  sit 
at  home  with  it,  travel  with  it,  see  it  in  his  mirror,  taste 
it  with  the  sacrament :  that  is  the  marvellous  thing,  aJid 
the  sign  of  his  fundamental  sincerity  in  life  and  art. 


21 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

An  IMA  naturaliter  pagana;  Aubrey  Beardsley  ended 
a  long  career,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  in  the  arms 
of  the  Church.  No  artist  of  our  time,  none  certainly 
whose  work  has  been  in  black  and  white,  has  reached 
a  more  universal,  or  a  more  contested  fame ;  none  has 
formed  himself,  out  of  such  alien  elements,  a  more 
personal  originality  of  manner ;  none  has  had  so  wide 
an  influence  on  contemporary  art.  He  had  the  fatal 
speed  of  those  who  are  to  die  young;  that  disquieting 
completeness  and  extent  of  knowledge,  that  absorption 
of  a  lifetime  in  an  hour,  which  we  find  in  those  who 
hasten  to  have  done  their  work  before  noon,  knowing 
that  they  will  not  see  the  even/ing.  He  had  played  the 
piano  in  drawing-rooms  as  an  infant  prodigy,  before,  I 
suppose,  he  had  ever  drawn  a  line :  famous  at  twenty 
as  a  draughtsman,  he  found  time,  in  those  incredibly 
busy  years  which  remained  to  him,  to  deliberately 
train  himself  into  a  writer  of  prose  which  was,  in  its 
way,  as  original  as  his  draughtsmainiship,  and  into  a 
writer  of  verse  which  had  at  least  ingenious  and 
original  nioments.  He  seemed  to  have  read  everything, 
and  had  his  preferences  as  adroitly  in  order,  as  wittily 
in  evidence,  as  almost  any  man  of  letters ;  indeed,  he 
seemed  to  know  more,  and  was  a  sounder  critic,  of 
books  than  of  pictures ;  with  perhaps  a  deeper  feeling 
for  music  tihan  for  either.  His  conversation  had  a 
peculiar  kind  of  brilliance  different  in  order  but 
scarcely  inferior  in  quality  to  that  of  any  other  con- 
temporary master  of  that  art;  a  salt,  whimsical  dog- 
matism, equally  full  of  convinced  egoism  and  of 
imperturbable  keen-sightedness.  Generally  choosing  tx) 
be  paradoxical;  and  vehement  on  behalf  of  any  en- 
thusiasm of  the  mind,  he  was  the  dupe  of  none  of  his 
23 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

own  statements,  or  indeed  of  his  ov/n  enthusiasms, 
and,  really,  very  coldly  impartial.  I  scarcely  except 
even  his  own  judgment  of  himself  in  spite  of  his  petu- 
lant, amusing  self-assertion,  so  full  of  the  childishness 
of  genius.  He  thought,  and  was  right  in  thinking,  very 
highly  of  himself;  he  admired  himself  enormously; 
but  his  intellect  would  never  allow  itself  to  be  de- 
ceived even  about  his  own  accomplishments. 

This  clear,  unemotional  intellect,  emotional  only  in 
the  perhaps  highest  sense,  where  emotion  almost  ceases 
to  be  recognizable,  in  the  abstract,  for  ideas,  for  lines, 
left  him  with  all  his  interests  in  life,  with  all  his 
sociability,  of  a  sort  essentially  very  lonely.  Many 
people  were  devoted  to  him,  but  he  had,  T  think, 
scarcely  a  friend,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word;  and 
I  doubt  if  tihere  were  more  than  one  or  two  people 
for  whom  he  felt  any  real  affection.  In  spite  of  con- 
stant ill-health  he  had  am  astonishing  tranquility  of 
nerves ;  and  it  was  doubtless  that  rare  quality  which 
kept  him.  after  all,  alive  so  long.  How  far  he  had 
deliberately  acquired  command  over  his  nerves  and  his 
emotions,  as  he  deliberately  acquired  command  over 
brain  and  hand,  I  do  not  know.  But  there  it  certainly 
was,  one  of  ithe  bewildering  characteristics  of  so  con- 
tradictory a  temperament. 

One  of  his  poses,  as  people  say,  one  of  those  things, 
that  is,  in  which  he  was  most  sincere,  was  his  care  in 
outwardly  conforming  to  the  conventions  which  make 
for  elegance  and  restraint ;  his  necessity  of  dressing 
well,  of  showing  no  sign  of  the  professional  artist. 
He  had  a  great  contempt  for,  what  seemed  to  inferior 
craftsmen,  inspiration,  for  what  I  have  elsewhere  called 
the  plenary  inspiration  of  first  thoug'hts;  and  he  hated 
the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  an  inward  yeastiness 
and  incoherenicy.  It  amused  him  to  denounce  every- 
thing, certainly ,  which  Baudelaire  would  have  de- 
nounced ;  and,  along  with  some  mere  gaiiiinerie,  there 
was  a  very  serious  and  adequate  theory  of  art  at  the 
back  of  all  his  destructive  criticisms.  It  was  a  pro- 
24 


AUBREY  BEARDSUEY 

found  thing  which  he  said  to  a  friend  of  mine  who 
asked  liim  whether  he  ever  saw  visions :  "No,"  he 
repHed,  "I  do  not  allow  myself  to  see  them  except  on 
paper.'"     All  his  art  is  in  that  phrase. 

And  he  attained,  to  the  full,  one  certainly  of  his 
many  desires,  and  that  one,  perhaps,  of  which  he  was 
most  keenly  or  most  continuously  conscious :  contem- 
porary fame  of  a  popular  singer  or  a  professional 
beauty,  the  fame  of  Yvette  Guilbert  or  of  Cleo  de 
Merode.  And  there  was  logic  in  his  insistence  on  this 
point,  in  his  eagerness  after  immediate  and  clamorous 
success.  Others  might  have  waited ;  he  knew  that  he  had 
not  the  time  to  wait.  After  all,  posthumous  fame  is  not 
a  very  cheering  prospect  to  look  forward  to,  on  the  part 
of  those  who  have  worked  without  recompense,  if  the 
pleasure  or  the  relief  of  work  is  not  enough  in  itself. 
Every  artist  has  his  own  secret,  beyond  the  obvious  one, 
of  why  he  works,  it  is  generally  some  unhappiness,  some 
dissatisfaction  with  the  things  about  one,  some  too 
desperate  or  too  contemptuous  sense  of  the  meaning  of 
existence.  At  one  period  of  his  life  a  man  works  at  his 
art  to  please  a  woman ;  then  he  works  because  he  is 
tired  of  pleasing  her.  Work  for  the  work's  sake  it 
always  must  be,  in  a  profound  sense;  and,  with  Beards- 
ley,  not  less  certainly  than  with  Blake  or  with  Rosetti. 
But  that  other,  that  accidental,  significant  motive,  was, 
with  Beardsley,  the  desire  to  fill  his  few  working  years 
with  the  immediate  echo  of  a  great  notoriety. 

Like  most  artists  who  have  thought  much  of  popu- 
larity he  had  an  immense  contempt  for  the  public ;  and 
the  desire  to  kick  that  public  into  admiration,  and  then 
to  kick  it  for  admiring  the  wrong  thing  or  not  know- 
ing why  it  was  admiring,  led  him  into  many  of  his 
most  outrageous  practical  jokes  of  the  pen.  He  was 
partly  right  and  partly  wrong,  for  he  was  indiscrimin- 
ate; and  to  ])e  indiscriminate  is  always  to  be  partly 
right  and  partly  wrong.  The  wish  to  epater  le  bour- 
geois is  a  'natural  one,  and,  though  a  little  beside  the 
question,   does   not    necessarily    lead    one  astray.     The 

25 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

general  public,  of  course,  does  not  in  the  least  know 
why  it  admires  the  right  thing  to-day  though  it  ad- 
mired the  wrong  thing  yesterday.  Bu't  there  is  such 
a  thing  as  denying  your  Master  while  you  are  rebuking 
a  servant-girl.  Beardsley  was  without  the  very  sense 
of  respect ;  it  was  one  of  his  limitations. 

And  this  limitation  was  an  unfortunate  one,  for  it 
limited  his  ambition.  With  the  power  of  creating 
beauty,  which  should  he  pure  beauty,  he  turned  aside, 
only  too  often,  to  that  lower  kind  of  beauty  which  is 
the  mere  beauty  of  technique  in  a  composition  other- 
wise meaningless,  trivial,  or  grotesque.  Saying  tc 
himself,  "I  can  do  what  I  like;  there  is  nothing  I 
could  not  do  if  I  chose  to,  if  I  chose  to  take  the 
trouble;  but  why  should  I  offer  hard  gold  when  an 
I.O.U.  will  be  just  the  same?  I  can  pay  up  whenever 
the  money  is  really  wanted,"  he  allowed  himself  to  be 
content  with  what  he  knew  would  startle,  doing  it 
with  infinite  pains,  to  his  own  mind  conscientiously, 
but  doing  it  with  that  lack  of  reverence  for  great  work 
which  is  one  of  the  most  sterlizing  characteristics  of 
the  present  day. 

The  epithet  fin  de  Steele  has  been  given,  somewhat 
loosely,  to  a  great  deal  of  modern  French  art,  and  to 
art  which,  in  one  way  or  another,  seems  to  attach 
itself  to  contemporary  France.  Out  of  the  great  art 
of  Manet,  the  serious  art  of  Degas,  the  exquisite  art 
of  Whistler,  all,  in  such  different  ways,  so  modern, 
there  has  come  into  exisitence  a  new,  very  modern,  very 
far  from  great  or  serious  or  really  exquisite  kind  of 
art,  which  has  expressed  itself  largely  in  the  "Courrier 
Firangais,"  the  "Gil  Bias  Illustre,"  and  the  posters.  All 
this  art  may  be  said  to  be  what  the  quite  new  art  of 
the  poster  certainly  is,  art  meant  for  the  street,  for 
people  who  are  walking  fast.  It  comes  into  competi- 
tion with  the  newspapers,  with  the  music-halls ;  half 
contemptuously,  it  popularises  itself ;  and,  with  real 
qualities  and  a  real  measure  of  good  intention,  finds 
itself  forced  to  seek  for  sharp,  sudden,  arresting  means 
26 


A-UBRFY  BEARDSLEY 

of  expression.  Inste'id  of  seekinti  pure  beauty,  the 
seriousness  and  self -absorption  of  great  art,  it  takes, 
wilfully  and  for  effect,  that  beauty  which  is  least 
evident,  indeed  least  genuine;  nearest  to  ugliness  in  the 
grotesque,  nearest  to  triviality  in  a  certain  elegant  dainti- 
ness, nearest  also  to  brutality  and  the  spectacular  vices. 
Art  is  not  sought  for  its  own  sake,  but  the  manual 
craftsman  perfects  himself  tc  express  a  fanciful,  in- 
genious, elaborate,  somewhat  tricky  way  of  seeing 
things,  which  he  has  deliberately  adopted.  It  finds  its 
own  in  the  eighteenth  century,  so  that  Willette  be- 
comes a  kind  of  petty,  witty  Watteau  of  Montmartre ; 
it  oarodies  the  art  of  stained  glass,  with  Grasset  and 
his  followers:  it  juggles  with  iron  bars  and  masses  of 
shadow,  hke  Lautrec.  And.  in  its  direct  assault  on  the 
nerves,  it  pushes  naughtiness  to  obscenity,  deforms 
observation  into  caricature,  dexterity  of  line  and  hand- 
ling being  cultivated  as  one  cultivates  a  particular, 
deadly  bottle  in  fencing. 

And  this  art,  this  art  of  the  day  and  hour,  competes 
not  merely  with  the  appeal  and  the  popularity  of  the 
theatrical  spectacle,  but  directly  with  theatrical  meth- 
ods, the  methods  of  stage  illusion.  The  art  of  the  ballet 
counts  for  much,  in  the  evolution  of  many  favorite 
eflFects  of  contemporary  drawing,  and  not  merely  be- 
cause Degas  has  drawn  dancers,  with  his  reserved, 
essentially  classical  mastery  of  form.  By  its  rapidity 
of  flight  within  bounds,  by  its  bird-like  and  fiower-Iike 
caprices  of  color  and  motion,  by  that  appeal  to  the 
imagination  which  comes  from  its  silence  (to  which 
music  is  but  like  an  accompanying  shadow,  so  closely, 
so  discreetly,  does  it  follow  the  feet  of  the  dancers), 
by  its  appeal  to  the  eyes  and  to  the  senses,  its  adorable 
artificiaHty,  the  ballet  has  tempted  almost  every 
draughtsman,  as  the  interiors  of  music-halls  have  also 
been  singularly  tempting,  with  their  extraordinary 
tricks  of  light,  their  suddenness  of  gesture,  their  triumph- 
ant tinsel,  their  fantastic  humanity.  And  pantomime, 
too,  in  the  French  and  correct,  rather  than  in  the 
27 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEy 

Englisli  and  incorrect,  sense  of  that  word,  has  had  its 
significant  intiuence.  In  those  pathetic  gaieties  of 
Willette,  in  the  windy  laughter  of  the  frivoHties  of 
Cheret,  it  is  the  masquerade,  the  EngHsh  clown  or 
acrobat  seen  at  the  Folies-Bergere,  painted  people 
mimicking  puppets,  who  have  begotten  this  masquerad- 
ing humaniity  of  posters  and  illustrated  papers.  And 
tlic  point  of  view  is  the  point  of  view  of  Pierrot — 

"lo  subtil  Konie 
Do  sii  nijilice  Inflnie 
Do  poete-grimacior" — 

Verlaine's  Pierrot  (jaiiiin. 

Pierrot  is  one  of  the  types  we  live,  or  of  the  moment, 
perhaps,  out  of  which  we  are  just  passing.  Pierrot  is 
passionate :  but  he  does  not  believe  in  great  passions. 
He  feels  himself  to  be  sickening  with  a  fever,  or  else 
perilously  convalescent ;  for  love  is  a  disease,  which  he 
is  too  weak  to  resist  or  endure.  He  has  worn  his 
heart  on  his  sleeve  so  long,  that  it  has  hardened  in  the 
cold  air.  He  knows  that  his  face  is  powdered,  and.  if 
he  sobs,  it  is  without  tears ;  and  it  is  hard  to  distinguish, 
under  the  chalk,  if  the  grimace  which  twists  his  mouth 
awry  is  more  laughter  or  mockery.  He  knows  that  he 
is  condemned  to  be  always  in  public,  that  emotion  would 
be  supremely  out  of  keeping  with  his  costume,  that  he 
must  remember  to  be  fantastic  if  he  would  not  be 
merely  ridiculous.  And  so  he  becomes  exquisitely  false, 
dreading  above  all  things  that  "one  touch  of  nature" 
which  would  ruffle  his  disguise,  and  leave  him  defence- 
less. Simplicit}',  in  him,  being  the  most  laughable  thing 
in  the  world,  he  becomes  learned,  perverse,  intellectual- 
ising  his  pleasures,  brutalising  his  intellect:  his  mourn- 
ful contemplation  of  things  becoming  a  kind  of  gro- 
tesque joy,  which  he  expresses  in  the  only  symbols  at 
his  command,  tracing  his  Giotto's  O  with  the  elegance 
of  his  pirouette. 

And  P)eards1ey,  with  almost  more  than  the  Parisian's 
deference  to  Paris,  and  to  the  moment,  was,  more  than 
28 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

any  Parisian,  this  Pierrot  (jainin.  He  was  more  than 
that,  but  he  was  that :  to  be  that  was  part  of  what  he 
learnt  from  France.  It  helped  him  to  the  pose  which 
helped  him  to  reveal  himself;  as  Burne-Jones  had 
helped  him  when  he  did  the  illustrations  to  the  "Morte 
d'Arthur,"  (111.  7-10)  as  Japanese  art  helped  him  to 
free  himself  from  that  influence,  as  Eisen  and  Saint- 
Aubin  showed  him  the  way  to  the  "Rape  of  the  Lock." 
(111.  53)  He  had  that  originality  which  surrenders  to 
every  influence,  yet  surrenders  to  absorb,  not  to  be 
absorbed;  that  originality  which,  constantly  shifting,  is 
true  always  to  its  centre.  Whether  he  learnt  from  M. 
Grasset  or  from  IMr.  Ricketts,  from  an  1830  fashion- 
plate,  or  from  an  engraved  plate  by  Hogarth,  whether 
the  scenery  of  Arques-la-Bataille  composed  itself  into  a 
pattern  in  his  mind,  or,  in  the  Casino  at  Dieppe,  he  made 
a  note  of  the  design  of  a  looped-up  window-blind,  he 
was  always  drawing  to  himself,  out  of  the  order  of  art 
or  the  confusion  of  natural  things,  the  thing  he  wanted, 
the  thing  he  could  make  his  own.  And  he  found,  in  the 
French  art  of  the  moment,  a  joyous  sadness,  the  service 
to  God  of  Mephistopheles,  which  his  own  temperament 
and  circumstances  were  waiting  to  suggest  to  him-. 

"In  more  ways  than  one  do  men  sacrifice  to  the  re- 
bellious angels,''  says  St.  Augustine ;  and  Beardsley's 
sacrifice,  together  with  that  of  all  great  decadent  art, 
the  art  of  Rops  or  the  art  of  Baudelaire,  is  really  a 
sacrifice  to  the  eternal  beauty,  and  only  seemingly  to  the 
powers  of  evil.  And  here  let  me  say  that  I  have  no 
concern  with  what  neither  he  nor  I  could  have  had 
absolute  knowledge  of,  his  own  intention  in  his  work. 
A  man's  intention,  it  must  be  remembered,  from  the 
very  fact  that  it  is  conscious,  is  much  less  intimately 
himself  than  the  sentiment  which  his  work  conveys  to 
me.  So  large  is  the  sub-conscious  element  in  all  artistic 
creation,  that  I  should  have  doubted  whether  Beardsley 
himself  knew  what  he  intended  to  do.  in  this  or  that 
really  significant  drawing.  Admitting  that  he  could  tell 
exactly  what  he  had  intended,  I  should  be  quite  pre- 
pared to  show  that  he  had  really  done  the  verj  contrary. 
29 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

Thus  when  I  say  he  was  a  profoundly  spiritual  artist, 
though  seeming  to  care  chiefly  for  the  manual  part  of 
his  work ;  that  he  expresses  evil  with  an  intensity  which 
lifted  it  into  a  region  almost  of  asceticism,  though 
attempting,  not  seldom,  little  more  than  a  joke  or  a 
caprice  in  line ;  and  that  he  was  above  all,  though  almost 
against  his  own  will,  a  satirist  who  has  seen  the  ideal; 
I  am  putting  forward  no  paradox,  nothing  really  con- 
tradictory, but  a  simple  analysis  of  the  work  as  it  exists. 
At  times  he  attains  pure  beauty,  has  the  unimpairec' 
vision;  in  the  best  of  the  Salome"  (Ills.  15-29)  designs 
here  and  there  afterwards.  From  the  first  it  is  a  diabolic 
beauty,  but  it  is  not  yet  divided  against  itself.  The  con- 
sciousness of  sin  is  always  there,  but  it  is  sin  first  trans- 
figured by  beauty,  and  then  disclosed  by  beauty;  sin, 
conscious  of  itself,  of  its  inability  to  escape  itself,  and 
showing  in  its  ugliness  the  law  it  has  broken.  His  world 
is  a  world  of  phantoms,  in  which  the  desire  of  the  per- 
fecting of  mortal  sensations,  a  desire  of  infinity,  has  over- 
passed mortal  limits,  and  poised  fehem,  so  faint,  so  quiver- 
ing, so  passionate  for  flight,  in  a  hopeless  and  strenuous 
immobility.  They  have  the  sensitiveness  of  the  spirit, 
and  that  bodily  sensitiveness  which  wastes  their  veins 
and  imprisons  them  in  the  attitude  of  their  luxurious 
meditation.  They  are  too  thoughtful  to  be  ever  really 
simple,  or  really  absorbed  by  either  flesh  or  spirit.  They 
have  nothing  of  what  is  "healthy"  or  merely  "animal"  in 
their  downward  course  towards  repentance;  no  over- 
whelming passion  hurries  them  beyond  themselves;  they 
do  not  capitulate  to  an  open  assault  of  the  enemy  of 
souls.  It  is  the  soul  in  them  that  sins,  sorrowfully, 
without  reluctance,  inevitably.  Their  bodies  are  faint 
and  eager  with  wantonness ;  they  desire  more  pleasure 
than  there  is  in  the  world,  fiercer  and  more  exquisite 
l)ains,  a  more  intolerable  suspense.  They  have  put  oflf 
the  common  burdens  of  humanity,  and  put  on  that  lone- 
liness which  is  the  rest  of  saints  and  the  unrest  of  those 
who  have  sinned  with  the  intellect.  They  are  a  little 
lower  than  the  angels,  and  they  walk  between  these  and 
the  fallen  angels,  without  part  or  lot  in  the  world. 
30 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  sort  of  abstract  spiritual  cor- 
ruption, revealed  in  beautiful  form ;  sin  transfigured  by 
beauty.  And  here,  even  if  we  go  no  further,  is  an  art 
intensely  spiritual,  an  art  in  which  evil  purifies  itself  by 
its  own  intensity,  and  the  beauty  which  transfigures 
it.  The  one  thing  in  the  world  which  is  without  hope 
is  that  mediocrity  which  is  the  sluggish  content  of  inert 
matter.  Better  be  vividly  awake  to  evil  than,  in  mere 
somnolence,  close  the  very  issues  and  approaches  of 
good  and  evil.  For  evil  itself,  carried  to  the  point  of 
a  perverse  ecstasy,  becomes  a  kind  of  good,  by  means 
of  that  energy  which,  otherwise  directed,  is  virtue;  and 
which  can  never,  no  matter  how  its  course  may  be 
changed,  fail  to  retain  something  of  its  original  efficacy. 
The  devil  is  nearer  to  God,  by  the  whole  height  from 
which  he  fell,  than  the  average  man  who  has  not  recog- 
nised his  own  need  to  rejoice  or  to  repent.  And  so  a 
profound  spiritual  corruption,  instead  of  being  a  more 
"immortal"  thing  than  the  gross  and  pestiferous  human- 
ity of  Hogarth  or  of  Rowlandson,  is  more  nearly,  in  the 
final  and  abstract  sense,  moral,  for  it  is  the  triumph  of 
the  spirit  over  the  flesh,  to  no  matter  what  end.  It  is 
a  form  of  divine  possession,  by  which  the  inactive  and 
materialising  soul  is  set  in  fiery  motion,  lured  from  the 
ground,  into  at  least  a  certain  high  liberty.  And  so  we 
find  evil  justified  of  itself,  and  an  art  consecrated  to  the 
revelation  of  evil  equally  justified;  its  final  justification 
being  that  declared  by  Plotinus,  in  his  treatise  "On  the 
Nature  of  Good  and  Evil :"  "But  evil  is  permitted  to 
remain  by  itself  alone  on  account  of  the  superior  power 
and  nature  of  good ;  because  it  appears  from  necessity 
everywhere  comprehended  and  bound,  in  beautiful 
bands,  like  men  fettered  with  golden  chains,  lest  it 
should  be  produced  openly  to  the  views  of  divinity,  or 
lest  mankind  should  always  behold  its  horrid  shape 
when  perfectly  naked ;  and  such  is  the  supervening 
power  of  good,  that  whenever  a  glimpse  of  perfect  evil 
is  obtained  we  are  immediately  recalled  to  the  memory 
of  good  by  the  image  of  the  beautiful  with  which  evil 
is  invested." 

31 


AUBREY  BKARDSLEY 

In  those  drawings  of  Ueardsley  which  are  grotesque 
rather  than  beautiful,  in  which  now  all  the  beauty  takes 
refuge,  is  itself  a  moral  judgment.  Look  at  that  draw- 
ing called  "The  Scarlet  Pastorale."*  In  front,  a  bloated 
harlequin  struts  close  to  the  footlights,  outside  the  play, 
on  which  he  turns  his  back ;  beyond,  sacramental  candles 
have  been  lighted,  and  are  guttering  down  in  solitude, 
under  an  unseen  wind.  And  between,  on  the  sheer 
darkness  of  the  stage,  a  bald  and  plumed  Pierrot,  hold- 
ing in  his  vast,  collapsing  paunch  with  a  mere  rope  of 
roses,  shows  the  cloven  foot,  while  Pierrette  points  at 
him  in  screaming  horror,  and  the  fat  dancer  turns  on 
her  toes  indifferently.  Xeed  we  go  further  to  show  how 
much  more  than  Gautier's  meaning  lies  in  the  old  para- 
dox of  "Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,"  that  "perfection  of 
line  is  virtue?"  That  line  which  rounds  the  deformity 
of  the  cloven-footed  sin,  the  line  itself,  is  at  once  the 
revelation  and  the  condemnation  of  vice,  for  it  is  part 
of  that  artistic  logic  which   is  morality. 

Beardsley  is  the  satirist  of  an  age  without  convictions, 
and  he  can  but  paint  hell  as  Baudelaire  did,  without 
pointing  for  contrast  to  any  contemporary  paradise.  He 
employs  the  same  rhetoric  as  Baudelaire,  a  method  of 
emphasis  which  it  is  uncritical  to  think  insecure.  In 
that  terrible  annunciation  of  evil  which  he  called  "The 
Mvsterious  Rose-Garden.''  the  lantern-bearing  angel 
with  winged  sandals  whispers,  from  among  the  falling 
roses,  tidings  of  more  than  "pleasant  sins."  The  leering 
dwarfs,  the  "monkeys,"  by  which  the  mystics  symbol- 
ised the  earthlier  vices ;  those  immense  bodies  swollen 
with  the  lees  of  pleasure,  and  those  cloaked  and  masked 
desires  shuddering  in  gardens  and  smiling  ambiguously 
at  interminable  toilets ;  are  part  of  a  symbolism  which 
loses  nothing  by  lack  of  emphasis.  And  the  peculiar 
efficacy  of  this  satire  is  that  it  is  so  much  the  satire  of 
desire  returning  upon  itself,  the  mockery  of  desire  en- 
joyed, the  mockerv  of  desire  denied.  It  is  because  he 
loves  beauty  that  beauty's  degradation  obsesses  him ;  it 
is  because  he  is  supremely  conscious  of  virtue  that  vice 
has  power  to   lay  hold  upon   him.     .\nd,  unlike  those 

*  This  drawing  is  not  reproduced  in  this  volume. 

32 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

other  acceptable  satirists  of  our  clay,  with  whom  satire 
exhausts  itself  in  the  rebuke  of  a  drunkard  leaning 
against  a  lamp-post,  or  a  lady  paying  the  wrong  com- 
pliment in  a  drawing-room,  he  is  the  satirist  of  essen- 
tial things ;  it  is  always  the  soul,  and  not  the  body's 
discontent  only,  which  cries  out  of  these  insatiable  eyes, 
that  have  looked  on  all  their  lusts,  and  out  of  these 
bitter  mouths,  that  have  eaten  the  dust  of  all  their 
sweetness,  and  out  of  these  hands,  that  have  laboured 
delicately  for  nothing,  and  out  of  these  feet,  that  have 
run  after  vanities.  They  are  so  sorrowful  because  they 
have  seen  beauty,  and  because  they  have  departed  from 
the  line  of  beauty. 

And  after  all,  the  secret  of  Beardsley  is  there;  in  the 
line  itself  rather  than  in  anything,  intellectually  realised, 
which  the  line  is  intended  to  express.  With  Beardsley 
everything  was  a  question  of  form  :  his  interest  in  his 
work  began  when  the  paper  was  before  him  and  the  pen 
in  his  hand.  And  so,  in  one  sense,  he  may  be  said 
never  to  have  known  what  he  wanted  to  do,  while,  in 
another,  he  knew  very  precisely  indeed.  He  was  ready 
to  do,  within  certain  limits,  almost  anything  you  sug- 
gested to  him;  as,  when  left  to  himself,  he  was  content 
to  follow  the  caprice  of  the  moment.  What  he  was 
sure  of  was  his  power  of  doing  exactly  what  he  pro- 
posed to  himself  to  do;  the  thing  itself  might  be 
"Salome"  or  "Belinda,"  "AH  Baba"  or  "Rejane,"  the 
"Morte  d'Arthur"  or  the  "Rheingold"  or  the  "Liaisons 
Dangereuses;"  the  design  might  he  for  an  edition  of  a 
classic  or  for  the  cover  of  a  catalogue  of  second-hand 
books.  And  the  design  might  seem  to  have  no  relation 
with  the  title  of  its  subject,  and.  indeed,  might  have 
none :  its  relation  was  of  line  to  line  within  the  limits 
of  its  own  border,  and  to  nothing  el^e  in  the  world. 
Thus  he  could  change  his  whole  manner  of  working 
five  or  six  times  over  in  the  course  of  as  many  years, 
seem  to  emplov  himself  much  of  the  time  on  trivial 
subjects,  and  yet  retain,  almost  unimpaired,  an  origin- 
ality which  consisterl  in  tlie  extreme  beauty  and  the 
absolute  certainty  of  design. 
33 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

It  was  a  common  error,  at  one  time,  to  say  that 
Beardsley  could  not  draw.  He  certainly  did  not  draw 
the  human  body  with  any  attempt  at  rendering  its  own 
lines,  taken  by  themselves;  indeed,  one  of  his  latest 
drawings,  an  initial  letter  to  "  Volpone,"  is  almost  the 
first  in  which  he  has  drawn  a  nude  figure  realistically. 
But  he  could  draw,  with  extraordinary  skill,  in  what  is 
after  all  the  essential  way:  he  could  make  a  line  do 
what  he  wanted  it  to  do,  express  the  conception  of 
form  which  it  was  his  intention  to  express;  and  this  is 
what  the  conventional  draughtsman,  Bouguercau,  for 
instance,  cannot  do.  The  conventional  draughtsman, 
any  Academy  student,  will  draw  a  line  which  shows 
quite  accurately  the  curve  of  a  human  body,  but  all  his 
science  of  drawing  will  not  make  you  feel  that  line,  will 
not  make  that  line  pathetic,  as  in  the  little,  drooping 
body  which  a  satyr  and  a  Pierrot  are  laying  in  a  pufT- 
powder  coffin,  in  the  tail-piece  to  "Salome."     (111.  28.) 

And  then,  it  must  never  be  forgotten,  Beardsley  was 
a  decorative  artist,  and  not  anything  else.  From  almost 
the  very  first  he  accepted  convention;  he  set  himself  to 
see  things  as  pattern.  Taking  freely  all  that  the  Japan- 
ese could  give  him,  that  release  from  the  bondage  of 
what  we  call  real  things,  which  comes  to  one  man  from 
an  intense  spirituality,  to  another  from  a  consciousness 
of  material  form  so  intense  that  it  becomes  abstract,  he 
made  the  world  over  again  in  his  head,  as  if  it  existed 
only  when  it  was  thus  re-made,  and  not  even  then,  until 
it  had  been  set  down  in  black  line  on  a  white  surface,  in 
white  line  on  a  black  surface.  Working,  as  the  deco- 
rative artist  must  work,  in  symbols  almost  as  arbitrary, 
almost  as  fixed,  as  the  squares  of  a  chess-board,  he 
swept  together  into  his  pattern  all  the  incongruous 
things  in  the  world,  weaving  them  into  congruity  by  his 
pattern.  Using  the  puff-box,  the  toilet-table,  the  ostrich- 
feather  hat,  with  a  full  consciousness  of  their  suggestive 
quality  in  a  drawing  of  archaic  times,  a  drawing  pur- 
posely fantastic,  he  put  these  things  to  beautiful  uses, 
because  he  liked  their  forms,  and  because  his  space  of 
white  or  black  seemed  to  require  some  such  arrange- 
34 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

nii-nt  of  lines.  They  were  the  minims  and  crotchets  hy 
which  he  wrote  down  his  music;  they  made  the  music, 
but  they  were  not  the  music. 

In  the  "Salome"  (Tils.  15-29)  drawings,  in  most  of 
the  "Yellow  Book"  (Ills.  33,  34,  35,  37,  40,  41)  drawings, 
we  see  Beardslcy  under  this  mainly  Japanese  influence ; 
with,  now  and  later,  in  his  less  serious  work  the  but 
half-admitted  influence  of  what  was  most  actual,  perhaps 
most  temporary,  in  the  French  art  of  the  day.  Pierrot 
gamin,  in  "Salome"  itself,  alternates,  in  such  irreverences 
as  the  design  of  "The  Black  Cape,"  (111.  17)  with  the 
creator  of  the  noble  line,  in  the  austere  and  terrible 
design  of  "The  Climax,"  (111.  24)  the  ornate  and  vehe- 
ment design  of  "The  Peacock  Skirt."  (111.  16.)  Here 
we  get  pure  outline,  as  in  the  frontispiece ;  a  mysterious 
intricacy,  as  in  the  border  of  the  title-page  and  of  the 
table  of  contents;  a  paradoxical  beauty  of  mere  wilful- 
ness, but  a  wilfulness  which  has  its  meaning,  its  excuse, 
its  pictorial  justification,  as  in  "The  Toilette."  (111.22.) 
The  "Yellow  Book"  and  the  first  drawings  for  the 
"Savoy,"  (Ills.  54-57)  a  new  influence  has  come  into  the 
work,  the  influence  of  the  French  eighteenth  century. 
This  influence,  artificial  as  it  is,  draws  him  nearer, 
though  somewhat  unquictly  nearer,  to  nature.  Drawings 
like  "The  Fruit  Bearers,"  in  the  first  number  of  the 
"  Savoy,"  with  its  solid  and  elaborate  richness  of  orna- 
ment, or  "  The  Coiffing,"  in  the  third  number,  with  its 
delicate  and  elaborate  grace,  its  witty  concentration  of 
line ;  drawings  like  the  illustrations  to  the  "Rape  of  the 
Lock,"  (111.  53)  have,  with  less  extravagance,  and  also 
a  less  strenuous  intellectual  effort,  a  new  mastery  of 
elegant  form,  not  too  far  removed  from  nature  while 
still  subordinated  to  the  effect  of  decoration,  to  the 
instinct  of  line.  In  the  illustrations  to  Ernest  Dowson's 
"Pierrot  of  the  Minute,"  (Ills.  45-47)  we  have  a 
more  deliberate  surrender,  for  the  moment,  to  Eisen 
and  Saint-Aubin,  as  yet  another  manner  is  seen  working 
itself  out.  The  illustrations  to  "  Madamoiselle  de 
Maupin,"  seemed  to  me,  when  I  first  saw  them,  with 
the  exception  of  one  extremely  beautiful  design  in 
35 


AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 

colour,  to  show  a  certain  falliiip^  off  in  power,  an  actual 
weakness  in  tiie  liandlin}^  of  the  pen.  But,  in  their  not 
quite  successful  feeling  after  natural  form,  they  did  but 
represent,  as  I  afterwards  found,  the  moment  of  tran- 
sition to  what  must  now  remain  for  us.  and  may  well 
remain,  Beardsley's  latest  manner.  The  four  initial 
letters  to  "Volpone,"  the  last  of  which  was  finished  not 
more  than  three  weeks  before  his  death,  have  a  new 
quality  both  of  hand  and  of  mind.  They  are  done  in 
pencil,  and  they  lose,  as  such  drawings  are  bound  to 
lose,  very  greatly  in  the  reduced  reproduction.  But.  in 
the  original,  they  are  certainly,  in  sheer  technical  skill, 
equal  to  anything  he  had  ever  done,  and  they  bring  at 
the  last,  and  with  complete  success,  nature  itself  into 
the  pattern.  And  here,  under  some  solemn  influence, 
the  broken  line  of  beauty  has  reunited;  "the  care  is 
over,"  and  the  trouble  has  gone  out  of  this  no  less 
fantastic  world,  in  which  Pan  still  smiles  from  his 
terminal  cohimi.  among  the  trees,  but  without  the  old 
malice.  Human  and  animal  form  reassert  themselves, 
with  a  new  dignitv.  under  this  new  respect  for  their 
capabilities.  Beardsley  has  accepted  the  convention  of 
nature  itself,  turning  it  to  his  own  uses,  extracting  from 
it  his  own  symbols,  but  no  longer  rejecting  it  for  a 
convention  entirely  of  his  own  making.  And  thus  in 
his  last  work,  done  under  the  A'ery  shadow  of  death,  we 
find  new  possibilities  for  an  art.  conceived  as  pure  line, 
conducted  through  mere  pattern,  which,  after  many 
hesitations,  has  resolved  finallv  upon  the  great  com- 
promise, that  compromise  which  th^  greatest  artists 
have^  made,  between  the  mind's  outline  and  the  outline 
of  visible  things. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

BY 

AUBREY  BEARDSLEY 


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CETEZLT 


THK   I-ITANY   OK    MARY    MA(!r)AIJ:X 


A   PORTRAIT   OF   AUIiREY    HEARDSI^EY,    BY   HIMSELF 


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INCIPIT    VITA   NOVA 


SANDRO   BOTTICELLI 


"  SIEGFRIED  •• 
From  '•  Th<'   Studio 


MERLIN 
From  "  L.e  Morte  d'Arthur ' 


VIGNETTE 
"  Lo  Morte  d'Arthur  " 


HOW   QUEEX   GUENEVEH   MADE   HER   A   NUN 
From  "  Lo  Morte  d' Arthur  " 


"OP   A    NEOPHYTE,    AND    HOW    THE    BLACK    ART 
WAS  REVEALED  UNTO  HIM  " 


THE   KISS   OF   JUDAS 


A   SUUUE.STKU    UKFUKM    IN    HALa^KT    COSTUiMK 


BARON   VERDIGRIS 


THE  WOMAN   IN  THE   MOON 
From  "  Salome  " 


THE   PEACOCK   SKIRT 
Prom  '■  Salome  " 


THE    BLACK   CAPE 
From  '■  Salome  " 


THR   PLATONIC    LAMENT 
From  "  Salome  " 


ENTER   HEKODIAS 
From  '■  Salome  " 


THE   EVES   OF  HEROD 
From  "  Salome  " 


THE  STOMACH  DANCE 
From  '■  Salome  " 


THE   TOILETTE   OF   SALOME 
From  "  Salome  " 


THE   DANCER'S    RICWARD 
From  '•  Salome  " 


THE  CLIMAX 
From  "  Salome  ' 


THE   TOILETTE   OF   SALOME,    FIRST    DRAWING 
From  "  Salome  " 


JOHN   AND    SALOME 
From  ■■  Salome  " 


SAtiOMB   ON    SETTEE 


DESIGN   FOR   TAILPIECB 
From  "  Salome  " 


DESIGN   FOR   "  SALOME  " 
From  "  The  Studio  " 


THE  YELLOW  BOOK 

AN  ILLVSTF^ATEJ)    QVAmTERLY. 


rr^H_C  AND     JOHN    LAME, 

PIVE5HlLLINGSr"'''°'"-=^  ^'^d 

I  VIOO  »T.  *  LONDON 


APf^lL  IS-*- 
HDCCCXCIV  . 


DESIGN  FOR  COVER  OF  "  THE  YELLOW  BOOK 
PROSPECTUS 


NIGHT  riECE 


PORTRAIT    OF   MRS.    PATRICK    CAMPBELL 


TITLE    PAGE    ORNAMENT    FOR    "  THE    YELLOW    BOOK," 
VOLUME   II 


COMEDY   BALLET   OP   MARIONETTES.      I 
From  "  The  Yellow   Book,"  Vol.   II 


f'OMEOV   BALLET   OF   MARIONETTES. 
From  "  The  Yellow  Hook,"  Vol.  II 


COMEDY    BALLET    OP    MARIONETTES.      Ill 


GARCONS   DE   CAFE 
From  ••  The  Yellow  nook,"  Vol.  II 


THE   SLIPPERS   OP   CINDERELLA 


ANDREAS.  MANTEGNA, 

PAINTEK. 

AND. 

ENGRAVER.  OP PAWA 

1U9t— 1306. 


PORTRAIT  OP  MANTEGNA 
From  "  The  Yellow  Book,"  Vol.   Ill 


THE   WAGNERITES 
From  "  The  Yellow  Book,"  Vol. 


Ill 


LA   DAME    AUX   CAMELIAS 
From  "  The  Yellow  Book,"  Vol.  Ill 


MADAME   HEJANE 


PORTRAIT  OF   BAhZAQ 


DESIGN  FOR  FRONTISPIECE   TO   "  AN   EVIL   MOTHER- 
HOOD " 


DESIGN  FOR  FRONT   COVER  OF   "  PIERROT 


BeA»\6SLEV 


AN   ATHENIAN   WOMAN 


-  t.i-^ 


MYRRH  I NA 


TIIK   DHEAM 


i 


•fTJi'^ihS 


THE    UAHON'S   PliAYKH 


THE    llAPE   OK   THE   LOCK 


DESIGN   FOR   THE   PROSPECTUS   OF    "  THE    SAVOY 


AXOTHER    DESIGN    FOR   THE    PROSPECTUS   OF 
'•  THE   SAVOY  " 


THE  5AV0YI 


COVER   DESIGN 
From  "  The  Savoy,"  No.  1 


CONTENTS   PAGE 
Prom  "  The  Savoy,"  No.  1 


THE   ABBE 
From  "  Under  the  Hill  " 


THE  FOUHTH  TABLEAU  OF  "  DAS  RHEINGOLD 


ERDA 
To  Illustrate  "  Das  Rhelugold  " 


THE   DEATH   OF   PIERROT 


AVE  ATQUE  VALE  :   CATULLUS,   CARMEN  GI 


AUBREY   LtEARDSLEY'S   BOOK   PLATE 


University  of  California 

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